Hi everybody, and welcome to the first Memphis football mailbag of 2016.

Lots to get to in this week’s mailbag, from the dud of a bowl performance to Mike Norvell’s new coaching staff and everything in between. Remember, if you have any questions as we speed through the offseason here, you can send them to me at any time either by Twitter. I’ll answer them periodically over the next few months, whenever we have a critical mass of questions.

With that out of the way, let’s dive right in.

@Tom_Schad your opinion on did rumors/reality over the last half of season over the staff going really affect the team over the last 6 games

-- Excellent way to start us off here. Seems like this is a lingering question for a lot of Memphis fans. There’s an assumption among some folks that the staff just mailed it in, and that caused the team to lose four of its last five. My take: That’s an awfully convenient narrative, and an overly simplistic way of looking at things. Did the absence of staff play a role in the Birmingham Bowl? Sure. That’s fair. I don’t know to what extent, but any time you lose a head coach and three position coaches, it’s going to present some challenges for players. Did it play a role in the 4-5 weeks preceding that? I honestly don’t think so. Remember, we circled that three-game November stretch long before the season as the sequence to watch. I called it “the gauntlet.” It was always going to be tough -- not just playing those three teams, but playing them in a row, and playing two of them on the road. All three, in my mind, were toss-ups, so the fact that they lost all three wasn’t entirely shocking. And if I had to pinpoint the reasons for those losses, I’d go game by game. Against Navy, I don’t think the Tigers played particularly well on either side of ball and really struggled to defend the triple-option. Against Houston, they actually played really well for three quarters but fell apart there in the fourth. And against Temple, they faced a team that had more to play for than they did, and it showed. At times, it’s tempting to combine different things that happen over the course of the season into a nice little narrative so that everything makes perfect sense. But I don’t think that’s fair or accurate here. I think Memphis played good teams, didn’t play particularly well (on the whole) and lost. That’s it.

@Tom_Schad Any thoughts on the QB situation for next year (who's the front-runner for the starting job, etc.)?

-- Ah, quarterback questions. Get used to this, folks, because there will be a lot of QB chatter for the next eight months or so. Here are my thoughts: As I wrote in Sunday’s paper, I think the two front-runners are redshirt freshman Brady Davis and JUCO transfer Riley Ferguson. It’s hard for me to even take a guess on who will start because it’s so ridiculously early in the process. Ferguson was recruited by Norvell, which may give him the inside track, but I promise you this will be something that Norvell and his staff will put a lot of thought into. Norvell, remember, will be the primary quarterbacks coach, so he’ll get to know them as well as anyone. Part of that will be evaluating them on the field in practice, but how they do in the film room will be just as important. I don’t expect Norvell to name a starter until the weeks leading up to the opener. In terms of the best fit, I don’t think there’s a clear answer. I know that Norvell prefers a mobile quarterback, but Justin Fuente’s offense had some designed quarterback runs, too. Davis and Ferguson can both move well. I don’t see one as being a better fit for this offense than the other, though I’m still learning the nuances of Norvell’s offense so I may be able to offer a better answer down the road.

@Tom_Schad do you think Galen Scott hire was a mistake? Also How are some of the former players that transferred doing at their new school?

-- I wouldn’t call it a mistake, but I certainly wouldn’t say it was a rousing success, either. The stats say Memphis was incredibly average on defense this season. The Tigers finished 67th of 127 Football Bowl Subdivision teams in scoring defense (27.3 points per game) and 77th in total defense (406.7 yards per game). Both ranked seventh in the American Athletic Conference. Not great, but not the worst defense of all-time either, as many fans seem to believe. The defense was about what we expected entering the season after losing eight starters: Inexperienced and inconsistent. It was surprisingly strong in stretches (Ole Miss, first half against Houston, etc.) and also awful in stretches. Scott, his staff and the players should all share the blame for that inconsistency.

@Tom_Schad How is the recruiting class coming along? What are Norvell's priorities as far as improving the depth chart? #TigerMail

-- The recruiting class as we know it has four signees from the midyear JUCO transfer period and eight oral recruits, all holdovers from the Fuente era. Don’t expect a whole lot of movement over the next week because we’re still in a recruiting dead period through Jan. 13. It will be interesting to see how this 2016 class comes together given the timing of Norvell’s hire, less than two months before signing day. Recruiting, as you know, is extremely fickle, and much can change over the next few weeks -- especially once the dead period ends and the mad dash for signing day begins. In terms of the depth chart, I don’t know if there’s any specific position(s) that Norvell and his staff are targeting. They just assembled as a group for the first time this week, so they’re probably still largely in evaluation mode. I think Norvell did address some possible needs with JUCO signees, though, by two offensive linemen, cornerback Jonathan Cook and Ferguson.

-- I think you answered your own question here a little bit. Yes, Auburn finished 6-6 and wasn’t particularly impressive this year, but it’s still an SEC team with SEC-caliber players. The SEC really made a statement this bowl season, going 8-2 (with Alabama still to play in the national championship game). Both in Birmingham and with Arkansas in the Liberty Bowl, I was struck by how much bigger, faster and/or stronger some of these SEC players are. I think you saw that in the Birmingham Bowl in the trenches and on some of those quick screens to wide receivers. That wasn’t the full story, of course. Memphis beat a pretty good SEC team earlier this year by executing really, really well to overcome some of that stuff. But when you don’t execute well against an SEC team, those physical differences can decide the game, and I think that’s the gist of what happened in Birmingham.

@Tom_Schad I guess you will not comment on play calling at bowl game -no opinion??

-- No, I have an opinion. Lots of ire over the play-calling for some reason. First things first: The plan entering the bowl game was for Brad Cornelsen to be the primary play-caller, as he had been all season. Fuente was involved in play-calling, but not to the extent that he had been in previous years. So if Fuente had coached in the bowl game, the play-calling probably would’ve been similar. Now, to your question: The play-calling didn’t stick out to me as the reason Memphis lost. In fact, I think much of the play-calling was a result of what Memphis was or wasn’t able to do on the field. “Throw it downfield more” was the most common complaint I saw, especially on 3rd-and-16, etc. OK, sure, saying it is all well and good, but how can you call a downfield passing play when the offensive line is struggling to block on intermediate passing plays? How can you call play-action passes when you’re struggling to run the ball? I think Memphis’ inability to pick up yardage on those perimeter screens and struggles up front influenced how the game was called. That’s why Memphis lost, as I see it.

@Tom_Schad how did Memphis do in attendance compared to other AAC and low end Power 5 teams like Rutgers, Vandy, Iowa St, Kansas?

-- Jon Solomon of CBS Sports actually crunched the numbers on this. Memphis finished 55th in the country in attendance and second among AAC teams, behind only Temple. The Tigers averaged more fans per home game than 13 Power Five teams, including Illinois, Purdue, Oregon State, etc. Memphis’ average attendance of more than 43,000 was the highest in the history of the Liberty Bowl and just the fourth time in program history the team had eclipsed the 40,000 mark. So yeah, all in all, pretty good year on the attendance front for Memphis.

-- I think the characteristics of the staff on the whole are pretty clear. There’s a mixture of youth and experience, which I think is a good thing. There’s a heavy Arizona State vibe, which makes sense and is also, in my opinion, a positive. And there’s a heavy recruiting bent, a few guys who have past experience as a recruiting coordinator (including Norvell) and others who are well-regarded in that area. Those are the things that stand out on paper. I think the most important thing with any coaching staff is how they work together. That’s something that Fuente’s staff had to its advantage, mostly because many of them had worked together since their Illinois State days. I think Norvell’s staff can mesh that same way and have similar success, but time will tell.

@Tom_Schad Who would you rate as the most impressive hire(s) among Coach Norvell's assistants? #TigerMail

-- Oh, I don’t know. I liked a lot of the hires for different reasons. I think I was actually most impressed that Norvell kept Darrell Dickey on staff. That may have seemed like a pretty obvious move to make, but it’s not something that every first-time head coach would’ve done. I think Dickey will be a huge resource for Norvell on a number of levels, from his familiarity with current players to the recruiting scene in Memphis to dealing with all the extra stuff that comes with being a head coach. (Not to mention that he’s a good coach in his own right.) So that’s probably what I’d go with. Though, like I said, I think a lot of the incoming hires will bring some good stuff to the table.